Come January, Bangaloreans gather at VV Puram to get their fill of the avarekai at the annual Avarekai Mela, a festival to showcase the beans and benefit the farmers who cultivate these beans.
The story of the Avarekai Mela goes back to the year 2000, to a condiments shop in the city’s VV Puram area. Geetha Shivakumar, proprietor of Shri Vasavi Condiments, noticed that while the broad beans were very popular, the hithkabele—peeled avarekai—were very easily perishable. To minimise farmers’ losses due to excessive spoilage, and to make sure that the crop did not go to waste, Geetha started a avarekai fair in her store offering a variety of fresh beans and savouries that scored on taste as well as shelf life.
Bengaluru’s love affair with the beans is an enduring one, and local residents wasted no time in lapping up the festival. “The response was tremendous,” says Swathi KS, Geetha’s daughter who now manages the festival. The festival soon made its way out of the store, transforming into a festive affair that spread across the street.
Crowds thronged the mela for fresh supplies, directly sourced from farmers, but more so for the unusual recipes made using the beans.
From avarekai dosa with hithkabele saru to holige (flatbread stuffed with beans and jaggery), the festival is also a display of the bean’s culinary possibilities. “When we started, nobody thought it would be possible to create so many different foods with the beans,” says Swathi, crediting her mother for coming up with the recipes. “My mother’s recipes were very popular among family members and friends and she taught those to the mela’s cooks.” It helps that the fair has been working with their original cooks and workers as much as possible who continue with the regular recipes while adding new items every year.
While avarekai honey jalebis were last year’s big hit, the spotlight this year has been on favourite local fast food – Gobi manchurian, naturally with an avarekai twist.
The quantity of avarekai sourced for the festival has also risen significantly over the years. In the first year, about 1,000 kg of beans were used in the festival. In comparison, Swathi struggles to put an estimate on the amount of beans being used in this year’s edition. The prices this year have risen somewhat, says Swathi, as crop production has suffered due to adverse weather conditions. “We sourced from round to 30 zillas (districts) this year; and last year we sourced about 200 tonnes for the festival.”
The number is likely to rise further this year, as the mela is also being organised in two new venues around the city. “This year, we are organising two more fairs (mini melas) in Malleshwaram and Nagarbhavi, as we received a lot of request from the local MLAs. They have also helped us set up the melas,” says Swathi. The expansion also makes the festival more accessible to foodies all around the city.
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Swathi, who worked at Ernst & Young before she joined the family business, says that her experience managing the fair is both challenging and fruitful. When I meet Swathi in the midst of the fair on a crowded school ground in Malleshwaram, she’s simultaneously trying to look after the crowd, respond to queries and phone calls, and correct a short power failure. “Joining the business was a new experience for me, but it’s wonderful to see people enjoy themselves and our hard work being appreciated,” she says. The third leg of the Avarekai Mela will be held at Nagarbhavi from January 25 to 29. For more information, call Shri Vasavi Condiments at +91 99451 58881.
Syed Ghani Khan[/caption]
When he was 22, Syed’s father had a brain haemorrhage, which left him in charge of the family and the farm as the eldest of the siblings. Syed took up farming and made up his mind to say goodbye to his dream forever.
He started using hybrid farming methods to grow rice like many other farmers in his district. One day, while spraying his crop with pesticides, he had a dizzy spell and fainted. That was the day when realisation hit him.
Different varieties of rice[/caption]
That was when the thought of realising his dream of becoming a museum curator occurred to him, by creating a unique living Rice Museum.
He found a handful of rice varieties in the nearby villages of Mandya district but didn’t stop at that. He travelled to the neighbouring districts and states in search of the rice varieties. Within a span of 4 years, he had collected, grown and conserved over 140 unique rice varieties, retaining the unique taste, aroma, colour, size and shape of each variety.
The traditional varieties have many advantages over the hybrid ones.They require less water. Some even have medicinal properties.
Syed is the proud curator of his museum[/caption]
Located in the Kirugavulu village of Mandya district, Syed’s Rice Museum as well as the 'Bada Bagh', an orchard renowned for growing over 116 varieties of mangoes, have become must-visit spots for farmers as well as agricultural researchers. His rice museum boasts of more than 850 indigenous rice varieties from all parts of the country.While most of the varieties of rice originate from India, the museum is also home to varieties from Myanmar, Thailand, Pakistan and several other parts of the world. Syed has transformed the farm into a bio-diverse ecosystem, which is host to over 60 species of birds. Maintaining this living museum and perpetuating the lost knowledge to the future generations is his only passion.
Avantika and Mrityunjay were nothing I had expected of estate owners. No airs, no touch of the sahib, nothing. They were warm, friendly and we immediately hit it off. The first order of business was a cup of tea, obviously. John, Avantika’s life and business partner who is a new tea convert (from coffee), is the official tea brewer in the house, we were told.
Mrityunjay, at his green tea factory.[/caption]
The conversation hummed around tea, interrupted by cups of Assam, then Japanese sencha and even a Taiwanese oolong – which has become my personal favourite.
They made it look easy with the laughter, the harmless ribbing, the stories… but choosing to work on the estate was a conscious choice, and for all three of them, it meant leaving behind fairly lucrative jobs.
Avantika says she knew that she wanted to work on sustainable farming. So she started a social initiative called Mana Organics, working towards sustainable development in rural India. After a few years in Arunachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, working with farmers, she thought why not take her ideas and apply them at her family’s tea estate.
Avantika Jalan, happiest when she’s in the midst of tea.[/caption]
When she moved here, the gardens weren’t doing well and her suggestion to shift to organic farming were met with much resistance from everyone, including senior management. The reason was that tea estates that had turned organic were suffering from dwindling production.
Going organic was a battle that couldn’t be won in a day. Avantika started small, to show that it was the way forward. Every newly planted patch was organic. And then came an unexpected infestation and the field managers dealt with it by spraying the field with pesticides. Says Avantika, “That was the first and the last time this happened.”
Mrityunjay left India to study and work in Singapore before deciding that urban living didn’t suit him. A year ago, he returned home to Chota Tingrai and joined Avantika. Since his return, Mrityunjay has turned things around at Chota Tingrai. His day starts early in the morning when he drives around the estate, meeting the field managers, overseeing the plucking, tasting the tea at every step to make sure it meets his quality standards. Boyishly shy and quiet, it’s hard to get him to talk about himself. Except when you mention sports, his second passion after tea. And he can talk for hours about football.
I ask them if they miss the city and they both say "No." They grew up living the estate life and this is who they are, they insist. Unconventional in the way they run the estate, in the way they live – an unostentatious but beautiful home – in the choices they have made, both Avantika and Mrityunjay are quietly bringing in a new way of working in the industry.
Simi, the young manager at Chota Tingrai’s green tea factory.[/caption]
We met Simi, who is all of 5 ft. tall, 24 years old and the manager of the new green tea factory. Simi started as a management trainee but was quickly given the entire responsibility of the green tea factory when both Mrityunjay and Avantika saw how focused and hardworking she was. And she’s not the only one. All the field assistants are young, driven and enthusiastic. Like Deepa, who is the daughter of the cook at Chota Tingrai, and Mahendra, whose mother was a tea plucker at the estate. In an industry, where hierarchy, experience, and age have always been given so much importance, this is unheard of.
Deepa, field assistant at Chota Tingrai, with her parents.[/caption]
Clearly, theirs is a life committed to tea.
We were sitting outdoors after dinner. The conversation inevitably turned to tea. Is it always like this, I asked. Is tea something that you can’t help but talk about? They laughed and told me of their version of Taboo – where ‘tea’ is ‘taboo’ but you can’t play for too long because on the estate the mornings begin really early.
(Photographs by Tridib Konwar)
Know more about Chota Tingrai 
“My ancestors were farmers and my family has been into agriculture for a long time now. I grew up watching them work in our fields and that was one of the primary reasons why I chose farming as the first option after quitting,” he says. From a large piece of land in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, on which his family practices traditional farming, Sankalp took a 10-acre area and began work with his father in July 2015, right after he quit. Today, he is a full-time farmer.
“Natural farming is all about inter-cropping and the input or production cost will be zero,” explains Sankalp. “Nothing has to be purchased from outside and everything required for the growth of crops is available around their roots. There is a misconception that you need to use fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides. Actually, there is no need to add anything from outside because our soil is usually prosperous and full of nutrients. Plants take 95-98% nutrients from air, water and solar energy.”
Sankalp attended a seminar by Subhash Palekar in Indore and also visited him in Nagpur a couple of times to understand natural farming better. In this method, farmers also use locally available natural bio-degradable materials as natural pesticides and fertilisers. So they plant legumes for making the soil nitrogen-rich, rotate crops to control pests and renew the soil, compost waste to use as fertilisers, etc. Things like cow urine and neem leaves act as insecticides, and cow dung acts as fertiliser.
With constant experimentation and learning, Sankalp grew tomatoes, onion, garlic, ginger, chillies, all kinds of pulses, and maize this season. His farm in Vidisha is located about 70 km from Bhopal, and Sankalp commutes to the field everyday, reaching the farm by eight or nine in the morning.
Another goal that Sankalp wants to fulfil with agriculture is to bridge the gap between farmers and consumers. “I think agriculture is the only business where raw material is purchased at retail price and the produce is sold at wholesale price. What farmers sell for Rs. 2-3 per kg in the wholesale market, then gets sold at Rs. 20-25 in the retail market. There is huge gap and I want to bridge it in a way that the role of the middle man is completely eliminated and the farmers can get best prices for their produce.” Keeping this in mind, Sankalp wants to make Indian farmers aware about natural farming and ways to take their produce to the markets in the most lucrative manner. Beginning with his neighbouring villages, he plans to expand his work, and also wants to educate people about healthy food habits in the future.
He has also come across many, especially his batch mates from college, who welcome this move and want to know how they can go about starting something similar.
“I always say that this is all about taking calculated risks. You need to be courageous, especially nowadays when people have so many liabilities in life – there are loans, etc. And you need to have a good support system around you. Before you take any such step, you should consult your family and take them into confidence too. But most importantly, you should be confident about yourself,” he concludes.
You can contact Sankalp 
The Union Budget 2017 has a slew of measures for the agriculture sector.[/caption]
Farmers get loans at Grameena Vikas Bank in Dhanura village of Telangana[/caption]
Encouraging cashless payment and digital transactions in rural India.[/caption]
Soil testing is an important to boost agricultural productivity[/caption]
Micro irrigation is an effective drought mitigation tool[/caption]
Contract farming[/caption]
Photo Credit: Edible Routes[/caption]
Slowly, urban India is seeing a resurgence in plant life. Olive green creepers now spread across the awnings of airy, city restaurants and balcony gardens lend life to previously cramped flats.
In the south, the Garden City of Bengaluru is striving to live up to it’s moniker. In the shadow of a monstrous skyscraper being erected on Sampige Road, across a traffic-clogged street, an organic terrace garden filled with tulsi, chilli, lime and rosemary pumps oxygen into air tainted by the coughing of blackened exhaust pipes. This is 
Sriram Aravamudan
Munchkins Montessori Garden
Photo Credit: Marudam Farm School[/caption]
Once a week, the troupe looks forward to a walk on the nearby Arunachala hill, where the land is viewed as an educational resource. Often, these trips involve learning important lessons about local flora and fauna, making an effort to retain a physical connection with nature. The school operates under the aegis of 
Raj Gilda[/caption]
The NGO began informally in 2006 with $500 and is a $1,00,000 company today, funded by the likes of JP Morgan and the MacArthur Foundation. Founders Raj Gilda and his wife Sunanda Mane believe the reason the organisation has such widespread impact is because it chose to work with existing channels rather than subvert them. Today their staff members have representation in State Education Departments and indirectly help shape policy.
“We realised that we would only impact large numbers if we could get our programme established within the system,” Raj explains. “It has now been approved by secondary school State Boards in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh and is soon to be recognised elsewhere too. Our programmes were first introduced under SUPW classes, but in 2014 they were recognised as full-fledged 100-mark subjects.”
Lend a Hand believes in providing students with a whole gambit of life skills — not necessarily vocational — right from engineering skills like welding, electrical wiring and carpentry to skills required for basic healthcare, agriculture, gardening, landscaping and the usage of renewable energy. As part of their programmes, they recruit local farmers, welders and electricians and train them to instruct at local schools weekly.
“The biggest challenge in the country today is that no one wants to do farming. The next generation of farmers’ kids are college graduates, who want to leave the business. But they're not necessarily getting jobs. We’re trying to promote a love for working with your hands and the soil. Through our programmes students learn things like soil testing and drip irrigation. They’re not experts at the end of it but it does give them practical orientation.”
Initiatives like Gilda’s could go a long way in changing the way the next generation incorporates nature into their quotidian lives. While programmes such as his are a contrived effort for many today, for the current generation of millennials, there is real glamour in the dirt.
Girindranath Jha with his father[/caption]
In those days, Girindranath would live in a hostel to study and come home only on holidays. He would find numerous stories there that made him find solace in the village.
Girindranath Jha[/caption]
In 2010, he married Priya, a BCA graduate from Delhi University, and shifted to Kanpur to work for a national news agency.
Life was good, Girindranath and Priya were at the peak of their careers. But somewhere within, there was still something missing. Girindranath used to tell his wife how he wished he could live a simple life in his village and also do something for it.
There was a dream shaping up in his mind for his village since 2006 when he finished his graduation. But like any other father, Girindranath’s also wanted him to be successful in life and take up a job. This stopped him from living in his village but he kept planting Kadamb trees whenever he visited Chanka.
Girindranath became a farmer in 2012[/caption]
Priya also supported him fully on this decision. And the love story that started at a café in a posh Delhi mall landed up in the lush green farms of Chanka.
Girindranath with his wife, Priya Jha (Left) and daughter, Pankhuri (Right)[/caption]
The narration of this sweet transition is well elaborated in Girindranath’s book, Ishq Mein Mati Sona, which was launched by the famous journalist Ravish Kumar and became a bestseller in Hindi.
[caption id="attachment_87021" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Grindranath with Ravish Kumar at the book launch of 'Ishq Mein Mati Sona'[/caption]
Girindranath soon turned into a full time farmer, but continued to write for newspapers like BBC-Hindi, NDTV, Dainik Jagran etc. He was living the life he always craved for. But his dream of connecting cities to villages was still unfulfilled. This was possible only by attracting rural tourism, for which the first thing he wanted to do was stop villagers from migrating to cities.
People left their natives only for one reason, and that was work. To help give them work, Girindranath offered his own land to farm on a partnership basis with the landless farmers.
The other reason farmers were losing their land was alcoholism. To eradicate this problem Girindranath started educating the children of the villagers about the ill effects of alcoholism. He made them watch documentaries and informational films based on this issue. Once the children were educated, they would tell their mothers about it and Girindranath would empower these women to fight against their husbands’ addiction.
Thus, slowly, there was a revolution in the village. The women who had never been out of their houses had started revolting. And within two years the village became addiction-free.
Girindranath has planted more than 1000 Kadamb trees in Chanka[/caption]
UNICEF Children's Film Festival 2015[/caption]
The film festival exposed the world to Chanka, which was until then an unknown, tiny village. The media, politicians and scientists, everyone turned towards it. Within a year Chanka had electricity and roads.
Rajdeep Sardesai in conversation with Girindranath[/caption]
The meeting would have some media professionals interacting with villagers, which gave them both a clear idea about them, clearing the stereotypical misconceptions.
He also kept telling the world about Chanka through his blog 
Chanka Residency[/caption]
He has also planted around 1,000 Kadamb trees so far in the village, and there’s a little pond too nearby. Amidst this wonderful space, he has made a little house by pitching in all his savings, and named it Chanka Residency.
The visitors who come here can enjoy the fresh weather of a village with lush greens, have traditional meals made by the villagers and listen to some soothing tribal music.
Ian Woolford, the first guest at Chanka Residency[/caption]
Ian is a lecturer at Australia's La Trobe University, where he happens to teach Hindi Language and Literature. Ian is writing a book on Fanishwar Nath Renu and could not find a better place to work on it other than Chanka Residency.
There have been many guests so far from the media and the art fraternity, but Girindranath fondly remembers 
Lindsey Fransen and David Kroodsma[/caption]
He also wishes to open a rural museum in Chanka, which will have all the farming equipment used by our ancestors, tools used by the tribal community that are on the verge of being extinct.
To find out more about the project please visit the 
It all started with a 15-year-old hobby of Likitha’s mother’s – organic farming. She took a 2-acre area on her family’s 127-acre land in Shankarpalli, Telangana, and started farming on it.
Likitha grew up watching her mother lovingly take care of her field. On this land, she would grow as much as she could, with the idea of making the family self-sustainable in a way that they didn’t need to purchase anything from the market. She would also distribute the produce among family and friends.
In January 2013, she and Padmaja officially launched Terra Greens Organic in Hyderabad with two aims – to spread awareness about organic food, and to help farmers across India adopt this method of farming. With their savings and a bank loan, the duo started its first farming project in Rajasthan, followed by Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, because the demand and understanding of organic farming was better in these states at the time.
They tied up with local farmers who grow produce according to their guidelines, and supply to Terra Greens. The company has now tied up with 4,000 farmers. Terra Greens signs contracts with theses farmers, stating that they will receive buyback guarantee if they grow the required produce.
“What we procure from the farmers is cleaned, packed, and sent to distribution points all over India, from where it goes to all other locations,” says Likitha. In the next few years, they are looking to get 7,000 more farmers on board.
“We then write contracts with farmers saying that they will support them in terms of training and paperwork for organic farming registration and certification. We also fund the certification cost for them. If they produce what Terra Greens wants, they get a premium over market price and we buy it. This way we are also ensuring that the supply chain is intact and we are giving farmers a route to the market. Many farmers growing organic crop in India today are forced to sell it in the conventional market because they do not have access to a company that will absorb all their produce,” says Likitha.
According the Likitha, organic products are costly because the demand is so low, but once the demand increases, the market will improve. “People need to make that extra effort to lead an organic life. It’s a matter of educating yourself and people around you, to go that extra mile and ensure that your food is safe for consumption,” she concludes.
Image for representation. Source: 
Rajendra Hari Patil[/caption]
Rajendra’s father was a small-time farmer in Wade village. They had just 1.5 acres of land, which didn’t yield much.
Rajendra was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters and life was never easy. It became even more difficult after his father died when Rajendra was just 11, and he started working on his farm along with his brothers.
It was “earning and learning”for them as none of them left their studies for farming. Once all the brothers were well educated, they left farming and got government jobs.
Rajendra, who pursued B.Sc (Chemistry) and then an M.PEd (Masters in physical education), joined a private school as a teacher. However, he lost his job in just a year.
Hemchandra Dagaji Patil[/caption]
Hemchandra’s father had a 30-acre ancestral land. However, he had a dream of making at least one of his sons either a doctor, engineer or lawyer. Hemchandra happily took up the responsibility of fulfilling his father’s dream and became a lawyer. But his heart remained in farming and he gave up his black coat.
Bhavarlal Jain[/caption]
Bhavarlal Jain is the founder of Jain Irrigation System[/caption]
From Left to Right - Hemchandra Patil, Bhavarlal Jain and Rajendra Patil[/caption]
Farmers like Rajendra and Hemchandra joined this initiative and are now earning lakhs a year.
Jain Irrigation has tied up with 5,000 farmers in Maharashtra.It helps these farmers get drip irrigation and also provides seeds and trains them to use new technology.
Hemchandra Patil showing his farm to visitors (Left) and Rajendra Patil showing his Banana plantation (Right)[/caption]
Rajendra Patil speaking at the seminar conducted by Harvard Business School.[/caption]
In 2011, when Harvard Business School in the USA conducted a seminar on food security systems, Hemchandra and Rajendra were invited to talk about their success stories.
The duo was given 15 minutes to explain how they did so well. However, everyone was so keen to know more, they were given an extra 15 minutes to answer questions from farmers from other countries.
A resident of Bidrakan village in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, Shrikrishna grew up watching his family members toil hard in the fields. It was in those fields that he received his training, and his background turned him into a farmer who loves his job today.
He started growing Kokum and making Kokum juice – a value-adding product. He was already aware of the medicinal and health advantages, and rarity of the fruit. But then, when he took the produce to sell in the markets, there were no takers at all. There was a complete lack of marketing opportunities.
“Based on their feedback, I started a small voluntary association of farmers to help sell their produce. This was more like a cooperative but nothing registered. Later, seeing its success and enthusiasm among farmers, we started ConnectFarmer,” he says.
The 27-year-old started ConnectFarmer in 2013 with the help of funds that he and his partners put from their own pockets. To gain more knowledge, Shrikrishna completed a fellowship in social entrepreneurship from Germany in 2015. Prior to this, he had completed his diploma in the same subject.
Today, with a team of four core member, he recognises farmers interested in growing value-adding products but are facing marketing problems. The team supports them with information on crop growth, encourages them to take their products to the market, helps them make their produce market ready, and then puts them on the website to sell.
Other than a small processing fee to help ConnectFarmer sustain itself, the entire money is given to the farmers. Those who have laptops or smartphones also chose to put their details online themselves. This entire process eliminates the middlemen, which further reduces the price of the products on the website as compared to prices of similar products in the market.
“I have seen the struggle of villagers. With research, I realised the kind of problems farmers are facing, and how poverty is making youngsters go outside of their villages. No matter which part of the world I go to, I always come back to my village where I am most at peace. I had to do something to help,” concludes Shrikrishna.
Know more about ConnectFarmer 
Mahesh[/caption]
Mahesh's farm in Kawlaga[K][/caption]However, he had seen this vicious cycle that a farmer gets trapped in. According to Mahesh, a farmer is always at a loss, regardless of whether nature is on his side or not. If it is drought then the prices of products are high, but the yield is so low that the farmer ends up earning less than what is invested.
Ironically, if the weather conditions are favorable, the production is so high that the rates are lowered. Farmers cannot even store the yield and wait for the prices to go high due to lack of access to warehouses. On top of that is the repayment of loans to moneylenders on huge interest rates.
This cycle repeats, until the farmer ultimately loses his land.
Mahesh was inspired by the stories on The Better India[/caption]
Vinoth Kumar[/caption]
Mahesh started farming in April 2016 on the day of Ugadi. But he did not leave his job. He was sure that he needed the money if anything went wrong. He also wanted to be ready with the infrastructural needs of farming like a pond, warehouse and cowshed.
Mahesh decided to do totally natural and organic farming. As all other farmers who owned the adjacent farms were using chemical pesticides, Mahesh’s farm was naturally attacked by pests. This was a challenge, which again was taken up by Mahesh with organic pesticides and attracting birds by throwing grain on his farms.
Stories of 
Mahesh works on his farms over the weekend[/caption]
He also gives credit to Mr.Bailappa who takes care of his farm and all the contractual farmers who work on his farm on the weekdays.
Today, Mahesh has harvested almost 30 different varieties of millets and lentils from indigenous seeds, which are purely organic. He recently received an award for organic/natural farming from the district agriculture department.
Tur Daal grown organically at Mahesh's farm[/caption]
Zerodor Waterless Urinals[/caption]
Director and CEO of social startup Ekam Eco Solutions, Banerjee has been working in the field of sanitation for the past four years, developing as well as marketing different environment-friendly technologies, one of which is Zerodor. The waterless and odourless urinal can save 50,000-1,51,000 litres of water per urinal each year.
Uttam Banerjee (left) and Prof Vijayaraghavan M. Chariar[/caption]
Zerodor is a patented technology and its rights are with IIT-D. Ekam holds the rights to disseminate this technology nationally and internationally. Zerodor works on a mechanical system with a valve, which allows the urine to go through and blocks the ammonia present in the urine in the urinal pipe. It can be retrofitted in existing urinals and no chemicals are used, no electricity is required, which makes the kit low-maintenance. All that is to be done is to wash the urinal with running water once a day to keep it clean.
Santhosh Singh[/caption]
A hefty pay and a luxurious life was not giving him what he would get over a weekend of just staying in the arms of nature – Peace and Health.
Santhosh quit his job and started experimenting with just 3 cows.[/caption]
Amrutha Dairy Farm[/caption]
With the learning gained from NDRI, and support from one of his brothers, Santhosh handled the farm really well and bought 85 cows in the next two years.
However the coming year was a challenge for them as their village suffered from a severe water crisis. Water levels, which were around 200 ft, reached up to 1,000 ft, and Santhosh had to put in all his savings to deal with this situation. But this crisis led Santhosh to hunt for options.
Research led him to a surprising fact -- dairy farming is not just about cows and milk. There are businesses related to dairy farming like selling fodder, transportation of milk, processing, selling cow-comforts like rubber mats and cubicles, selling medicines for the cattle, and the most profitable one --breeding of cattle.
So Santhosh started breeding cows and selling them once they started milking.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. They have such a facility in the farm.[/caption]
Meanwhile, a German company wanted to set up its processing unit in India. Santhosh offered his space for this and provided local consulting support, and during this period, learnt a little bit of cheese processing.
He slowly started to understand the whole value chain of the Dairy Industry and realized great opportunities that exist currently. Visitors started coming to his farm and he would enjoy meeting and interacting with them. And then came the idea of training and counseling the budding entrepreneurs.
From the past two-and-a -half years Santhosh is conducting workshops on two Saturdays of every month.
He has also helped setup over half a dozen dairy farms for his trainees who have hired him as consultant.
There is subsidy provided by NABARD, it is called as Dairy Entrepreneur Development Scheme (DEDS), here 25% subsidy is provided if a person takes Rs. 6lakh loan from the bank. Most of the banks provide loans for this and also help people avail subsidy from NABARD.
“The promoter has to bring in just Rs.60, 000 (10% margin money for Rs 6 lakh) and bank will fund the rest of the amount as a loan, which is about Rs 3.9 lakh apart from the Rs 1.5 lakh subsidy. So why take that big decision of quitting completely what you are doing in haste and end up with more problems when you can try the pilot project and learn while you earn,” suggests Santhosh.
Shankar Kotian[/caption]
After research of about 6 years, Shankar was determined to begin natural farming, which was based on the findings of PadmShri Subhash Palekar, and a dairy farm with all the modern amenities to supply hygienic milk to his consumers. In 2011, Shankar bought 8 acres of barren land near a water source in Moodu-Konaje village to start his dairy farm.
In 2012, Shankar quit his job and started building a house first in his newly acquired land to stay and start his new venture. A house was much needed as back in 2012, his farm was not connected to the main road. It was a 3 km muddy road, which made it difficult to reach the farm everyday to work.
Once the house was built, he bought organic manure from nearby farmers and grew grass in his land.
Shankar started with just 5 cows[/caption]
Cow breeding -
Once there was enough grass, he bought the cows. He spent almost three years learning as he had no prior agricultural experience.
Shankar's Dairy Farm[/caption]
The dairy farm is designed and constructed based on the industry best practices followed in western countries, but also suiting local conditions.
Some of the features are:
The slurry from the biogas plant is sold to other farmers using a tanker and pipes.[/caption]
He has also set up a biogas plant of 25 cubic meter, which runs with the dung produced from these 40 cows. Shankar has made a floating drum design for the biogas, but with a twist: the drum is not immersed in the slurry, instead a layer of water keeps it afloat. This concept is more hygienic. There are separate tanks for thick slurry and washed water. The gas produced from this plant is used for cooking and heating water.
The forest adjoining Shankar's farm[/caption]
He has converted 10% of this land into forest, which he says will act as lung space. In addition, more than 150 plants are planted in the periphery and in the middle of the farm that will provide more greenery and ensure moisture of the field.
He is also continuing to grow rubber and areca, which will give him benefits in the long run. So far, he has planted 1,800 rubber trees and 1,000 areca nut plants
Apart from the commercial dairy farm, and rubber and areca plantation, Shankar also grows paddy and vegetables with natural farming methods in the rest of the farm for their own consumption.
Shankar's farm[/caption]
The difference between organic farming and natural farming is that in organic farming you still feed the soil some organic fertilizer, but in natural farming you leave the soil to the nature with very less manual intervention. Hence, natural farming is also called no-work farming.
